


surround me with shouts of deliverance

by doreah



Series: your heart is a shaken fist [2]
Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV)
Genre: Adultery, Angst, Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Violence, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, POV Second Person, Post-Finale, Post-Season/Series 02, Power Dynamics, Rape/Non-con Elements, Religious Content, Secret Relationship, Sexual Content, Stockholm Syndrome, a most Problematic OTP on many levels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-06 23:00:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15895881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doreah/pseuds/doreah
Summary: You are a hiding place for me;you preserve me from trouble;you surround me with shouts of deliverance.[ Psalm 32:7 ]-----After 2x13, June returns for Hannah. Sometime and a revelation or two later, Serena finds refuge hidden in the cracks and crevices of her world.





	1. the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for disturbing content. It's very typical of the TV programme itself, so if you were upset by the content of the show, be forewarned that this includes similar subject matter. It doesn't get worse than 2x10, but consider that somewhat similar (although not quite as bad). There are depictions of both domestic abuse and rape, of both female characters.  
> Much thanks to my dear friend [@lazarus_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarus_girl/pseuds/lazarus_girl) for spending so much time talking this over with me, dutifully betaing my bad grammar and weird writing, helping it improve and become more like what I had in my head, and assuring me that it'll be fine to post! (Normally, it's not a big deal but this one is different.) So, thanks a million, girlie! I owe you one.  
> :D

* * *

 

 

She is the only one who knows.

 

It makes your twisted secret life its own little act of rebellion. There is so much that nobody has seen, or heard, or felt except her, in the shadows of musty four-post beds and creaky attic mattresses that have a few springs a little too close to bursting free.

 

When the dust settles and the blue shroud drapes over your shoulders, scratchy woollen knots making your skin crawl in a way they never had before, you feel hidden again, safe from other prying eyes. Safe from the shame of others knowing. But you do share it with the only other person who has ever been privy to him, to the darkened hallways and hushed cries of this household, to a quiet violence afforded to him by law and used like a new drug. You bear the brunt of most of his broiling impotence now, a secret from the other wives as he's found his power and an outlet for his fury.

 

The Marthas, they've always avoided it. He never cared enough to bother much with them at all as long as they made his tea, cooked his dinners, and ironed his crisp white collars just the way he liked them. But the Handmaids? They have always been different, bearing years of brutal training of his design and his leering gazes, and she is stranger still, more dangerous than the rest in her subtle passive-aggression and tiny unwavering defiance.

 

She was, to others and especially you, the very definition of temptation.

 

Surely Fred sees it too, feels the magnetism of her sin like the call of a lone wolf in the distance. There had been no mistaking that gleam in his eyes when she had been trapped, laid open, waiting for his dead seed to soak her undergarments and your expensive duvet. You think about your hands around her wrists too, how they gripped like a predator's talons, tight enough to break skin when Fred would lose himself in her instead of you. And the shame soaks up your arms like a slow acid with how fragile those bones were in reality. At the time, you'd thought her made of stone, not flesh. It was likewise reciprocated no doubt.

 

But those days were in the inbetween time. Between the old days and now, where nothing has changed too much but just enough for you to no longer feel blinding white rage as a response to humiliation and fear of her, fear of what she does to you and what she sees in you.

 

There is no doubt she knows you're not made of stone any longer.

 

She's seen the tapestry of green, blue, and purple bruises hidden regularly under your clothes, the red wounds, the mutilations, the dripping blood—all too human and weak. A garish flashing beacon of what it means to be a woman, _any_ woman now in this house, in this republic. She's learned to touch you only in certain places after you've been to his study and how to expertly ghost her fingertips over the older scars, pretending to ignore them for your sake and her own. Her gasps of shock have faded into almost pitying glances as you strip away the blue uniform of your place, of your sex and all the limitations that come with it these days.

 

Your humanity is no longer a surprise, although your newfound humility still seems to take her breath away occasionally. The stone has been broken, chipped at and now smashed and there are no pieces left to pick up. There's only the fine particles, like the dust that has settled over all the unused furniture in this old house of antique lies.

 

She seems the same as you now, freed from a crust of expectation and forced rigidity. But you always knew she would be the one to break first, to crumble at someone's fingertips. You just never thought they would be his: the other him, not the one you shared. The other him, clad like an armed priest in all black, whose face lingered in the eyes of your daughter. Your daughter. Yours and hers... and his.

 

But he's gone now, and has been for a while. You don't know where and nobody would tell you even if you dared ask because it has nothing to do with you. Decisions about the household are no longer in your purview and so you grate your teeth and clench your jaw when the new Guardians arrive to replace the relatively docile Nick. Four of them this time, older, with cold eyes, stern faces and broad shoulders built like human tanks. They terrify you; for the first time you are outnumbered by men.

 

Gilead can't risk a repeat of Nick's betrayal, or Isaac and Eden's righteous and unrepentant love, or losing a Handmaid again to the building underground, or having you speak out of place on anybody's behalf, least of all your own. Fred's become the lowest of the Commanders because of the scandals at your house, most of all the loss of a child—something a lesser man would certainly have been put on the Wall for. Fred, being the driving force behind Gilead (or so he claims), has the rules bend for him and sometimes for her; not for you.

 

Instead, they've imprisoned you all inside these walls together, thinking it safer to just ensnare you in a self-made Hell and post a disproportionate number of guards at every corner of the property. Better the Devil you know, perhaps. She came back for her other daughter, but nothing happens all at once, so she patiently lies in wait for her chance to break out. Except there is no escape now, no place either of you can go without an armed escort who is no longer working for your husband, but for _them_. (You no longer know who “they” are.) The loss of face, the fact you're all still stuck with each other in this hole, is a worse punishment than others you could imagine. Every creak of wood within these walls whispers, _The Lord's curse is on the house of the wicked_. 

 

It used to seem like such a big house, with plenty of rooms to hide away and a maze of hallways to navigate. Dark corners in every room could hide all manner of sins, no matter the magnitude. After all this time, essentially trapped inside this old house, you've realized exactly how tiny and grim it truly is.

 

There's a memory, sometime back in the late 90's, of those horrible fluorescent lights at the crappy shopping mall—the only shopping mall in your small Indiana town. There was that flickering one above the bench outside the pet shop that you'd spend hours sat on, just staring into the gaudy window of the store.

 

Inside were these Betta fish in their tiny little glass globes, right there against the window pane. Red, blue, black, purple, copper, white. You always loved the way they'd flash their long, flowing tails and fins at each other. Your older brother called them “fighting fish” and told you that if you put them all together in one bowl, they'd kill each other, almost right away. You scoffed in that way you always did because he was constantly telling you lies and then laughing when you'd believe them. When you refused to listen to him that time, he took you to the pet shop and asked you which one was your favourite.

 

You remember the fish: dark, lustrous blue with a glistening tail of bright teal and pink, and two front fins that looked blood red. That fish was the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen. It came with the bowl and you cradled the glass in your clumsy 15-year-old hands, grimacing at the way your fingers left oily little marks all over it.

 

By the time he pulled out his fish and sneered, “Watch this, idiot!” you knew it was already too late.

 

That's precisely what you feel like now: those beautiful bettas, all in a tiny glass bowl together. It's only a matter of time until you kill each other, and that's probably exactly what Gilead wants. If you just kill each other, they save face... and bullets.

 

Fred is angry constantly, unable to control his temper and frustration about his lack of station and your participation in what amounts to treason. He blames you for everything; everybody does. After all, you're just the covetous, lustful, greedy, prideful, wrathful, barren _woman_ so obviously it's all your fault.

 

Lashing out is a seemingly joyful pastime for him, something to fill the day, something he'd never done before that night in his study when you'd come home from trying to save a child. A new addiction. You used to have knitting to pass the time; now you spend a great deal of your days and nights drowning in your own guilt, empty prayer, and insatiable gender treachery of all things.

 

What does she do? What did she ever do? It was always a sort of mystery how someone could keep occupied with literally nothing to fill the time. If you had to guess, you'd say her hobbies include picking paint flakes off the walls with her short nails and hatred. She'll always hate you a little and him, probably a lot more. She's likely imagined killing you both, maybe even stopped herself from actually doing it once or twice. Or every day. It's not like it would be particularly difficult. It's not like you hadn't considered it too, in the dark nights.

 

You all, and Rita too, hate the new Guardians. They skulk around every corner, watching, waiting for any excuse to take any one of you in. Probably Eyes. Who's going to snap first: them or him? Maybe it'll just be a bloody melee with all of you, your skirts flashing teal and hers flashing red, just like those fish.

 

The best excuse they have is right under their noses but you and her keep to the twilight hours, to the night when their blinding flashlight beams and heavy boots would give them away far in advance. She trembles still, her eyes growing just a little wider sometimes when these men appear out of nowhere, even in places they're meant to be during daylight hours. There's a longing too, as if she still expects to see him one day.

 

You know for a fact she won't. You may not have explicitly written them, but you'd helped design the philosophy behind those laws too. There's a jealousy that bubbles up when you see her eyes scanning the Guardians as she does. How did she find actual love in this place and you'd been working so hard for it for decades? There's also a pang underneath that animus that feels her loss.

 

You've all been abandoned by God.

 

Part of you knows that your perception of her changed after that last ceremony, or the guise of a ceremony, the desperate lie you used to justify that disgusting act to yourself.

 

She had been granite: impenetrable, hard, unyielding, cold to the touch. A temptress and traitor, akin to the golden calf of Gilead. Even that night when you were consumed with the pervasive need to crawl into her bed, to kiss her waist through the rough linen of her nightdress, to run your hand over her growing stomach to touch the life inside, she had been still and cold as a Greek statue. Like a pageant trophy or a Ming vase, something you could possess if only for its symbolism and what it could contain. She was nothing really; her worth was in the life growing inside her, not her own. When you slipped your hand lower—but not too low—she didn't flinch, her breath didn't hitch. She made no movement or sound at all.

 

But then, weeks later, as she screamed, and flailed futilely, and fought with everything in herself to get free from you for the first time, you swallowed down the bile because you wanted that baby— _your_ baby. Not hers. It hadn't been right for her to withhold that from you after all you'd done for her. Her agonizing cries didn't come from polished stone; tears don't drip from a Donatello piece; blood couldn't come from rock. Those were undeniably human things.

 

And, despite the scripture and the laws, nobody can own another human; not even you. Not really.

 

Later, in the darkness, you felt a twinge of discomfort in your wrist, realising it was probably sprained from the struggle and you wondered briefly how hers felt consider how tightly you held her down. There was a constant ringing in your ears that sounded suspiciously like screams. It was possibly only then that you understood that she was a person, despite all the evenings you had spent in his study with her, pouring over documents and sharing tiny shards of yourselves from before.

 

Now, you know well how her flesh bends and flexes, how it trembles under sheets and puckers in the cold, how her body shudders under your palms and she comes undone from only your lips. Her presence next to you is weighty but not heavy. It's warm, with her breathing steady and deep, and you can't actually recall the last time your real husband shared this space like this. You convince yourself it's for her own protection, for her safety, her own good. But as time has passed, you realise that there's obviously something more it in for you as well. In fact, it's probably mostly for yourself like most of what you do.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He repeatedly and relentlessly took a metal bar to the tender soles your feet for daring to go for a longer walk today, even though your constant black chaperones said nothing. There isn't a single day where he trusts you not to make a scene, not to embarrass his righteous manhood and challenge his authority in some way, not to start some pathetic women's revolution destined to fail once again. He has doubled-down since losing Nicole, if only to prove himself to his brothers. It has been something you had taken for granted, this freedom of movement as small as it was. Now you're afforded less leeway than Rita, or even her, and for the first time you don't resent these other women for what they have and you don't.

 

Her.

 

 _Her name is June_.

 

You'd learnt all about her previous life without having to learn her name, refusing to hear whispers. To give her a name meant she wasn't yours to use any longer. “Offred” was easier to live with. She was _of_ something. It signified her place, one which you lorded over her at every opportunity. Being that angel of vengeance against her was the only control you thought you had left. Offred was your property, your beautiful miracle, your last prayer... and even that remained unanswered.

 

June is somebody else. June is you in another life, if you'd taken a different path.

 

June is the woman that watches you carefully, sometimes with concern and sometimes with a shrouded enmity, even now, and knows every thought before you do.

 

June is the reason you are where you are, missing a daughter that was never really yours and questioning the entire foundation of every belief you hold. She is the person that sneaks into your room and crawls into your bed when nobody is listening, whose skin touches yours and it feels like lightning. She is the woman that tends to your wounds in silence, soothes you like you're her daughter as she applies a bandage or herbal salve.

 

It made your skin crawl the first time it happened because you are not a weak woman, and she is not allowed to have this power over you. But she's the one who knows better than anyone what this humiliation—the brutality of this system _you_ helped create—feels like because you've done it to her. In one way or another, whether it's the Red Center or this household, it's all because of your hand. The same one now that is missing two fingers, not just one, and the hand attached to where your wrist cracks painfully every time it rains from when they broke it as punishment for yet another of your weak rebellions. It never healed right. She never healed right either.

 

June is the woman who at first pressed too hard into a bruise or a wound and claimed it was an accident, a slip of her very calculated ministrations. Your spine stiffened and that quiet, helpless rage built up in your chest, strangling you a little.

 

The first time she did it, you yanked your hand away and snarled rabidly at her to get out.

 

The second time it happened, after he lashed you for innocently questioning the rationing of fresh vegetables on his plate versus yours, you bit down on your tongue and let her prod you, let her elicit the hot stabs of pain that some part of you knew she deserved to own. It was a prize for her, to hear your pathetic yelps in the dark bedroom. Your tears had been nothing new to her; she's provoked those as well many times. Her bland apologies were purposely fake, and her fingers would slip again. Many times.

 

They don't anymore.

 

Not since you started working directly towards something new. You're involved now with the underground or Mayday or whatever silly name they've given it, as much as possible under the circumstances (which is essentially very little). The seeds had been sown when you gave up your daughter (Yours and hers, you always remind yourself). That was your unofficial defection and only she and that one martha witnessed it. Maybe it started with Eden and that Bible full of doodles. Maybe it started after that ceremony. Maybe it started when Fred was in hospital. Maybe it started when June entered your house and made you look in the mirror.

 

_To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice for wrongs repeatedly committed._

 

You keep that in your mind at all times. You'd sacrificed everything you had and still you weren't close to absolution so there must be another way. When you said “mayday” to Rita one night after your husband has retired to his study, she stiffens, looks to June who blinks slowly, and nods. That made it official. That's when she stopped prodding your wounds with a mulish finger.

 

You still say the word “kidnapped”, playing the game, but you know better and so does everyone else in the house. Even Fred. He has never forgiven you and it's made him a monster, a man you no longer recognise as your husband. He's bitter, vile, so far away from that man you fell in love with.

 

He has begrudgingly forgiven her because she can bear him another child, maybe a son. He can stuff her full of semen and prayers and maybe she'll bloom again. You never will. He can watch her belly grow rotund, slide his large hand over her curves, watch her breasts get heavy with milk and strain against tight fabric, see the milk soak through her red dress and then he can get hard later in the solitude of his bedroom with the image. You'll never do that for him. For you, there's only a thick, white gunshot scar in place of where a life should be.

 

He's always had a thing for pregnant women. Always. When you were more naive, you'd thought it had to do with children themselves and how much hope, bountiful promise, and love they represented. As much as you do love children and you still cling onto the belief that a woman should be required to birth a child in this crisis, more importantly, you honestly believed that a baby would make him love _you_ again. Like before, when you had womanly promise. When you had purpose to life.

 

But you see it now for the sick fetish it is, coupled with his obsessive need for peer envy. It's not about actually having real children, raising young ones in his own image at all, bringing about a life to fruit and thrive. Self-gratification is such an ugly word, you think without an ounce of irony.

 

In a week, it will be time again.

 

You've avoided it for months with excuses of feeling unwell. Of course, it's not a lie. You don't feel well about the Ceremony—you never have. It was detestable to have to be party to some perverted threesome, all your limitations and restrictions on display to another woman, a woman who did something better in your husband's eyes, had something more important than you, all in some sick biblical pantomime. You fucking hated having to look him in the eye, playing pretend, and most of all, watching him come inside her. The Ceremony was truly Gilead's worst invention but they always reassured you that it was done for the good of mankind. Just not necessarily womankind.

 

Even now, the mere suggestion of it makes your skin feel like oil and your stomach cramp into painful knots. All you picture now is the last time; it had been so much easier when it was with Offred, when she was made of stone. But in two weeks, Fred will not be denied his spoils for another time, especially by his insolent wife who is nothing but an embarrassment to him.

 

You've never told anybody what happened later on those nights you made up excuses to avoid it, not even her. It's not hers to know. You don't tell her how he would come in to your bedroom, stinking of expensive whiskey to take what was forbidden to him earlier. He didn't dress it up with ritual or prayer; he didn't pretend that God was in the room at all. He twisted your arms back, left bruises on your rib cage where he shoved you too hard to show dominance, punched just hard enough to knock the wind (and defensiveness) out of you for a shocked moment. Of course, you begged him not to, you struggled against his grasp as he pushed your face into the pillow, you stifled your own cries.

 

You especially don't tell her how he grunted “Offred” as he came.

 

 _Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things._ Or so you husband likes to remind you, all too frequently. So you do: you endure.

 

You consider flat out refusing him in front of her instead. What would happen then? For the ceremony to be complete, and to please God, both husband and wife must be present and willing. If you resist, surely it will do something for the greater good.

 

Fred makes a snide comment one evening about it, and you catch her wide-eyed glance before she steels herself. She's so much more assured now but there is still this that she has not been able to rectify. And why would anyone?

 

You decide to try to refuse and see... if you can keep your nerve between then and now.

 

 

The bottoms of your feet begin to sting and burn again under the heat of the heavy duvet. Wincing briefly, you wriggle around as best you can without aggravating your wounds too much, hoping to give them air. The doctor gave you a week until you can move around again, although there will still be pain. A month before you can fit your swollen feet into the requisite turquoise heels of the younger wives.

 

She told you the truth, because unlike the doctor who spends most of his days wheeling around his modern office on a comfy chair, she has been through it as punishment for running, back at the Red Center.

 

Nobody would ever believe you of course but you didn't know about the Red Center, about what they actually did within those prison walls. None of the Wives knew the extent. None wanted to ask, none were allowed to tell. And as much as people would insist you must have known because you designed it, they don't know that it wasn't your invention at all, not _that_ place itself. The system was your idea in so much as the idea of all fertile women fulfilling their duty to God by virtue of their biological reality. Not actual Aunts and Handmaids. The architecture, both legal and literal, was not.

 

You did not write the laws; you weren't allowed near the actual written words. As a woman, you were not allowed to work, read, write, or speak to the council of men who mushroomed in the fertile deadfall you provided. You helped, of course. They used your face, your popularity, and your volcanic temper as a front for the movement because who would ever take a regime such as Sons of Jacob seriously unless it was seen to be the idea of another woman? Fred manipulated your zeal, fed off your ideals and harvested your passion, warping them into his own inventions to take credit for. You goaded him into worse than murder; he played you like a fucking Stradivarius.

 

You just trusted the men to do right by you, _for_ you. And the ignorance amongst the Wives was acceptable, preferable even to knowledge. After all, it was knowledge, the most forbidden of fruit, doled out to man by woman, that caused the fall of mankind in the first place.

 

Part of you still denied it though, until you had to come face to face with June and her delicate resistance.

 

There is very little light in Gilead at night time, not like it was in Boston before. People go to bed early, there is a curfew, and nobody except your husband and men like him even dare to leave their houses after dark. Even so, all the laws on earth cannot control the moonlight as it illuminates your bedroom through the gaping, large windows. You had purposely pulled back the heavy curtains before bed, knowing that the moon would be full.

 

She comes to you not much later, tip-toeing through the doorway under the cover of night and her white linen nightdress making her appear ghost-like, knowing to avoid the particular floorboards that creaked loudest on the way. Habit is a funny thing. You have told yourself and her that this is for her own good, that you can offer some semblance of protection from him as if your bedroom is an exception to the rules of Gilead, as if you have some unseen power greater than hers. (Neither is even close to true.) She pretends to believe your lie, and responds with weak whispered excuses of her own for coming into your bed, like checking on your bruises and wounds, and bringing Rita's poultice.

 

That is how it happens tonight.

 

Maybe the concern and sympathy is real, but you have your doubts after all.

 

Offred— _June_ is a survivalist, not a bleeding heart. It's what you hated most about her when you met, when she selfishly didn't put your needs and your desires above her own, but played on your emotions, exposed your weaknesses just enough to get what little she could for herself. She, the wolf. You, the lamb, walking straight into her snapping jaws. Over and over again she'd been playing you like a fiddle with those smug smiles and the arrogant challenge in her piercing blue eyes, seeing right through you until you retaliated with abuse, taking her bait without question. You'd blamed it on her often: _she got what she deserved, she brought it on herself, she was asking for it_.

 

Maybe she had been. Maybe she had wanted to see your humanity, no matter how cruel because if you had that capacity for anger, you must have other emotions as well, ones she could use against you and for herself. You were so alike all along.

 

She doesn't need to pry rage and poison out of you anymore as a gateway to more weakness. You will give and have given her whatever she asks for, within the small confines of your leftover power. She learnt that when you became a mother for real, by sacrificing your own desires for the good of your child. (Yours and hers.)

 

You still touch her sometimes without her permission, and rarely feel bad about it. (Maybe you haven't learned as much as you think.) You remind yourself that you're human and have needs, and just that concept alone as you lie alongside her, feels like a sin against God. You crave everything a perfectly normal person does: affection, attention, passion, sex, love. And it's everything this society has taken great pains to deny to every single woman, you included.

 

But even more so, the time you spend with her, talking, whispering secrets in the darkness—serious conversations that aren't about roses or Gilead but rather fears, memories, and _books_ from before—all of that feels like an all-out act of war. When you trace letters onto her bare skin in the aftermath, you wonder if this is how the pilot of the _Enola Gay_ felt too.

 

It's always at night, in bed, yours or hers, it doesn't seem to matter. But your hand—the one with all five fingers still—seems to be possessed by another hidden god, one that reaches out to grasp at her thigh, feeling the taut muscles. You're attracted to her strength, and her thighs are just where you feel it most. A sturdiness that you've always lacked feels natural to her. Envy bubbles deep inside you sometimes, because you'd considered yourself strong once, especially when you felt the adrenaline rush of approval and validation in the early stages of what would eventually become Gilead. He would give you that smile too, like he was proud. You never once questioned what it really meant.

 

She flinches at your hand, even now, even after all the places your fingertips have been and all the ways they've begged her skin for undeserved forgiveness. But she doesn't move away at all. Instead her hand sneaks down, covers yours where it rests against her thigh because she knows by now what it all means. There isn't quite an invitation in it, but you take it anyway like you've taken so many things and you crawl forward, closer to her as your hand grips harder at her leg and her loose blonde hair tickles your nose.

 

Stories from the pre-Gilead era would have had you believing that her hair would be lightly fragrant and smell of lilies or lilacs, and the soft skin at the nape of her neck would taste like peaches and summer mornings. The bed would be covered in freshly washed linens, sprinkled with rose petals and a gentle mist of lavender. And candles. Candles everywhere, giving off a gentle aroma of honey and fresh pine needles.

 

None of that rings true here, ever. The best anybody can hope for is the leftover smell of hard soaps and the same buttermilk lotion rationed to all Wives.

 

June doesn't smell like any of the romantic ideals that had been built up in your imagination, but she's steady, warm, and present. You think that in another life maybe, you could have been together raising your daughter. But then again, none of this would have happened. You wouldn't have lived under the same roof; she wouldn't have been a surrogate for you; you wouldn't be bound together by the oppression you helped build and the abuse that you instigated and have both endured. She'd still be happily married to that vengeful man who yelled at Fred in Toronto, with her other daughter, the one you refuse to let her see. (The one you use against her to get her to behave.) You'd still be called barren, and Fred would still secretly hire pregnant hookers and bookmark fetish pornography on his laptop. You would still be lonely and angry, he would still be lonely and miserable, both of you doomed to an empty, resentful existence.

 


	2. hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who do me violence

“Serena.”

 

There has always been something about the way she says your name, whether it's whispered or screamed. When you think of temptation, it's in those three syllables, said in that distinctive timbre. It had always accompanied a plea, or a demand, or a trick. Or disgust. It was too personal, used as a secret weapon to disrespect you, to remind you that you really are no better than her. It was used to appeal to your humanity, and it almost worked, almost every time. Nothing had terrified you more in those days than hearing Offred spit out your name in desperation because it had been so _fucking_ tempting to give in. It would send you into a blinding rage at other times, mostly to cover up how vulnerable she made you feel by merely getting you to even consider her pleas.

 

You knew how dangerous she was to you, to the movement, to your entire ideology the first moment you made eye contact. She still scares you and you're pretty sure a large part of her very soul still hates your guts but you're both stuck here, in Hell, roped together by misery, so she just has to make the best of it. She's a survivalist, after all.

 

This time your name is a quiet murmur and a guarded question and you quiver a little at the feeling it sends down your spine, something forbidden. A taboo. Danger tingles between your legs.

 

_Lead us not into temptation..._

 

“June,” you carefully mirror back with the same cadence, except your voice is hoarse from screaming earlier at Fred's retaliation. Her name still tastes like sin on your lips but you savour it all the same, more and more as time passes, like drinking black coffee.

 

“It won't hurt as much in the morning if you just sleep.” It's not quite an admonishment, but it could be, if she was anybody else. But rather, all you hear is her experience talking. You grip harder on her thigh as if it's possible to squeeze strength from it, and probably your modest fingernails dig in a little too hard, and she allows you this without complaint.

 

In the grand scheme of things, in terms of suffering, this is probably nothing to her and she ignores it. Most nights the newfound guilt drowns you so much you sleep only fitfully and wake up with bags under your eyes and low-grade headaches. Tonight, you just want to forget everything for a few minutes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

More and more often Fred would appear with a fire behind his eyes, directed to any woman that fell into his periphery—well, any woman that isn't cooking his dinner. It has been months since Nicole's birth, weeks since her disappearance, and months since any Ceremony. The inferno rages hotter the longer he waits and you know he's about to erupt any day. Rita can't deny him answers to his invasive questions about June's menstruation any longer; you can't stall with imaginary sicknesses that just happen to strike you for a day or two and dissolve into ether.

 

He wants a son.

 

He wants to save face.

 

He wants a child that isn't like _you_ ; one that doesn't have that inferior vagina and its requisite weaker mind, one that doesn't make you question your own place in this world of your own creation and his rule. He wants a boy and despite all evidence to the contrary, he still holds fast to the delusion that he can provide those building blocks. Except there is no Nick any more to stand-in for a sperm buddy, like some sort of fucked up procreation relay race. You won't risk asking the new Guardians unless you want to be strung up on the Wall for treason. What a glorious naked corpse you would be with your missing fingers, scar-riddled back—and backside, unfaded bruises, and slumped shoulders of defeat.

 

So instead, she will be bathed, called to your bedroom, and the group of you will stand around as Fred recites an incantation for deity-sanctioned rape, that terrible thing you do together.

 

Was this really what you imagined when you put those words into that essay? Was this really what you imagined when you stood in those desperate, frothing crowds and called for a new society? Sometimes you wonder if it was; you can't believe it now you have to live it. But you had also imagined women willing and wanting to fulfil their fertile destinies. You imagined saving the world through God's grace, and damn the suffering and sacrifices. You imagined statutes. Dolls, maybe. You imagined that in time, after reason, enlightenment and finding the word of God in their souls, they would lie back and want to perform their most womanly duties to the Lord. You imagined getting your own child through those willing, godly women, finally.

 

(It turns out you never understood other women at all.)

 

She shattered that illusion with four simple words: _Serena, no, please, stop_. Screamed at you as you knelt above her, desperately trying to block it out, failing. All you could hear was her voice and all you could feel was her writhing beneath you.

 

 _Don't, please. Serena, no_.

 

There had really only been two people in that room, you realize too late. Fred was almost absolved of his involvement even though it was his seed, his violation, his physical intrusion into her body. She only saw you, felt you, cried out for you. Fred was just an extension of your body, not you of his. You were the one with the power to stop it; somehow she knew whose fault it all was. After all, he was only following your orders, taking his cue from your temper inflamed by humiliation and impotence, from your impulsive and innate brutality. You were the coward, not Fred. And she'd known that all along.

 

Only you could be so cruel.

 

Maybe she knew her strangled cries of your name would never cease haunting your nightmares.

 

Her voice ringing in your ears and the bile in the back of your throat overtook common sense and your good composure. You had seen into her, for real. She had seen right through you, to your snivelling, pathetic, gutless core.

 

 _Serena, no_.

 

Afterwards, you couldn't hold back the vomit, in the downstairs bathroom as far away from her as possible. At the time, you hadn't really understood why it had affected you so much. It wasn't as if you hadn't participated in that same ritual month after bloody month.

 

You can't do it again, you know that already. (How did she?) You can't listen to the pleading cries or wrench her arms down onto the mattress.

 

But you can't not do it either. That simply wouldn't stand. Usually you turn to scripture or law or your husband when you're not certain of which path is best to take. At worst, you lash out at those beneath you to shoulder your confusion and misplaced rage. To deny that a small, nasty part of you wants to take it out on her would be a lie because it really is her fault that you can't get a handle on your emotions now.

 

Then you look down at your hand with its missing fingers. Your wrist aches and the fresh lash on your shoulder stings as the rough wool rubs against it. You probably couldn't hold her down anymore even if you wanted to. Funny how he crippled the main thing he relied on: your ability to hold another woman down.

 

You count down the nights until she's fertile because it's habit you know by heart.

 

 

 

Your sore, bare feet pad softly and slowly up the wooden steps to the attic a few nights before you're all due to go through the ritual. The hallway is smaller than you remember, more claustrophobic and oppressive. A dreary tunnel with no light at the end. You don't knock any longer because it's too much of a signal to any one of the Guardians who could appear at any moment. Rita oiled the hinges not long ago on your request. It was amazing what butter could do.

 

With the moon and the clear spring night, you have enough light to move to her bed without issue and perch yourself on the edge, near her feet. For a moment, your gaze slides up to the faux-wood panelling at the head of her small bed. It covers a grave sin: reading and writing. You lost a finger for that as well, even if you had nothing to do with it. For some reason, maiming a blasphemous Handmaid seemed distasteful to Fred, who had no problem with smacking her about and rape but drew the line at mutilations. So, somehow, it became your fault that she acted out, like she was your toddler who stole another child's toy at daycare. Now you have a stub where your ring finger was, just enough to maintain the wedding band, that marker of possession. He merely reminded you that you were lucky it wasn't your whole hand this time, like he was doing you a favour.

 

The music box is still on her dresser but you're careful never to give her flowers anymore. It's too obvious; you must maintain the facade that you're still estranged women, the desired unnatural state of Gilead.

 

She's used to this by now: you creeping around in the middle of the night, tear stains dried on your cheeks, seeking any sort of connection with another human being in whatever form it takes. There are parts of you that want to believe she is looking for the same since you're both so isolated from life itself that there doesn't seem to be any other option. She moves to sit up in bed and watch you, a little warily as always. There will never be a day when she fully trusts your motives, and you've accepted that as reality because it is a logical consequence of all your behaviours in the past. You'd never trust you either.

 

Her eyebrow raises just a little, like she knows exactly what you want, like a tease. It's a familiar smirk and you've always hated it because it's evidence that she knows you better than you do. She can see exactly what you are and what you really want but are too afraid to take. (It's no longer about asking, not in Gilead. As a woman, to ask is to be immediately denied.) There's no life inside her to give you feeble excuses and distractions. There hasn't been in a while and still it hasn't stopped these defiant, sinful visits. You can believe God has cursed you with this weakness, this clawing need inside you and maybe your suffering with it is part of the penance you must pay for everything else.

 

She doesn't seem to see life that way. To her, fragility and instability appear almost desirable. It is, after all, your weaknesses that drew you together, that has drawn all of the women together. Once you recognized that the only impediment to connection was the fear of seeming weak in front of another woman, when you saw that same pathetic fear in your husband with his fellow commanders, you realized that power is actually in overcoming that fear, but not necessarily the vulnerability itself.

 

As you clumsily lumbered and navigated this alien feeling of pushing aside ego and pride, you gave into other desires as well which you'd rather not dwell upon. Surely God will forgive you in time for these sins of the flesh as well. They are merely a product of forced circumstance, not freewill.

 

(There are worse lies you've convinced yourself of.)

 

That insufferable smirk is still stretched across her lips, and she tilts her head to the side as her loose blonde hair slides over her shoulder and exposes an expanse of soft skin along her neck. You loathe the way your gaze shifts immediately and lingers there for too long. Your hand clenches into a weak fist, and you dig what's left of your fingernails into your own palm.

 

Before, the temptation she offered you was in rebellion, in resistance, in questioning God, and breaking the rules of a society that keeps all of you down and terribly lonely. They were little things when taken individually. It was the temptation to return to the person you were before Gilead, which would be an admission that you had made a huge mistake in its creation. Worse, it would be an unholy confession that the true nature of Gilead was more than just the sum of its parts.

 

That was all politics and scripture, abstract things that mankind had created of its own accord. But this? God has given you up to dishonourable passions.

 

This thing inside you is something else, very tangible—too real—and something you are convinced humanity would not have chosen if given the chance. It thrashes against the very foundations of your entire existence. It laughs in the face of all godly belief. And the worst problem is that it's not merely about pleasures of the flesh which would be easier to dismiss as the Devil's work, something you can atone for. You feel something else—terrifying and deep inside.

 

You've felt emptiness, discontent, and longing your entire life for something completely undefined and unknowable; it only magnified itself when everything else you knew was taken away in Gilead. Like a wild animal, you've attempted to appease the gaping void with work, scripture, marriage, gardening, ideology, power, hatred, celebrity, and finally a baby. You'd become a junkie scraping through the dumpsters of humanity for your next fix. She's just the latest drug, turning you into a wretched sycophant; _the righteous has enough to satisfy his appetite but_ _the belly of the wicked suffers want_ , after all. It's the worst possible version of yourself you've ever imagined.

 

The revulsion of your own desires is the least of your concerns, and you don't think you want to stop it even if you could. There's a lingering, innate satisfaction when your lips taste her skin, or your hands grasp at her hips, or her fingers are buried inside you and the heel of her hand creates friction in a way that causes a growing warmth through your body.

 

With a heavily veiled shame, you had to confess to God that she has made you come, harder than your husband, or even yourself. And there's a sense of impending damnation when you consider how completely free of restlessness and hollowness you feel when your face is buried between her legs, when she is biting down on her own groans and has her hands twisting tightly in your hair.

 

_Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life._

 

All the things done to you both, the world around you, the past, the people, the consequences of it, all disappears at the meeting of skin. All the things she's done: inconsequential. All the things you've done, to her and everyone, are gone in those moments—like some form of mortal salvation. Like, a fleeting insanity. It'd certainly felt that way the first time, when you came lost, tearful, like a beggar into her darkened temple, seeking undeserved solace and something more you'd not realised at the time until you pressed your mouth impetuously to hers. With God leaving your prayers unanswered and empty, you'd not known where else to turn but to her, your very last resort.

 

But of course whatever this is, it's only temporary because sex will never be forgiveness; it's not even evidence of it. She can still hate you just as much as ever and long after the bruises on her neck or wrists have faded, there is no way she will ever forget everything else you have done. _Seventy times seven_ , you hear as her mantra.

 

Still, despite it all, something about it all makes you feel whole, and you fucking hate it. It's dangerous in every single way known to both man and god. In this landscape of muted ever-winter, the pink flush of her skin, the golden blonde sheen of her hair, the way her blue eyes deepen in hue when aroused, the way colours flash brightly behind your eyelids as you come is like a rainbow after the storm. How can God require the sacrifice of something so beautiful?

 

 _Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect_.

 

Her smirk now, and the coy tease of skin she gives you, lets you know that she is well aware of all that. Her power over you in this situation is remarkable and visceral, lording your helpless desire over you like a carrot on a string.

 

It's her revenge.

 

But prostrating yourself for a cause has never been an issue for you and there are two things you'll still willingly submit to: God and her. (But the cause, Gilead— _Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is defiled with blood_.)

 

“Please.”

 

There is a voice that comes out the deepest part of your chest as a desperate whisper, a little bit tangled up in your tongue. Your hands now grasp at the loose quilt on her bed and squeeze. She's seen you far more pathetic than this: blubbering over all manner of things, throwing tantrums like a child over nothing, petulantly lashing out, stomping around, begging her not to stop as you shake and shudder at her touch. She rarely has heard you say that word however.

 

Your body is positively thrumming with anticipation and your breathing is a bit shallower as you wait for her answer. She's not going to say no, you know that already but you grow anxious all the same.

 

All it takes is a nod and you find yourself nose to nose, your hands (or what's left of them) grabbing at her jaw and pulling her in. There's no mistaking the catch of her breath too and it's these moments where you are thankful for the hesitation before you kiss her. She gives herself away just as much as you do.

 

It's only within the hidden cracks of this world that you've found a way for it to be bearable. Something as basic as human touch, of comfort or of pleasure, of a sharing experience where ritual is sidelined in favour of guiltless desire has been purposefully pushed away for so long that you can barely remember what it was like before. It's all for the simple need of human connection when so long you've been denied. Without that, what was left of the spirit to love God with?

 

Her breathing grows shallower against your lips and as you run a soft palm up her body, gathering up the light nightdress, your throat constricts with the knowledge that tomorrow is not going to be like this.

 

You won't be pulling off your own nightgown, pressing your hot skin against hers, revelling in the way you can feel her nipples harden against you. She won't be biting at the oversensitive skin of your neck, right where the blood pumps too close to the surface. You won't be able to roll your hips against her thigh, against her sex. She won't pant your name as your mouth works down her breasts and further still, across her stomach, and down to the bundle of curls between her legs. You won't bury your face in her scent and grasp at her ass, legs, hands, anything you can reach for leverage and connection. Her fingers won't be tangled in your loose blonde locks, fully in control with her hips gyrating, begging for more pressure, at a rhythm and pace of her choice. Later, she won't push you over, tired of you calling the shots. She definitely won't swirl a tongue over your nipples as she slides inside you and you crush a pillow to your face to muffle your impious moans.

 

You won't be able to taste her, only the tangy iron flavour of your own blood instead from biting your own tongue.

 

You won't have to stifle your screams; she will.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I don't want to do this.”

 

“I don't care what you want, Serena. It's what God...”

 

You tune him out almost immediately.

 

Of course, you have to do as he says, especially with the biggest, scariest one of the household Guardians standing just outside the door. The idea that the Ceremony takes place within your domain is yet another one of Gilead's little white lies to make Wives feel better. There is no inch of this rotten country that isn't tainted by men—except what you and her create, together, under the shroud of darkness. That is the only thing you've never had to share with anybody else here, especially him.

 

You find yourself nodding absently, ever the meek, obedient wife—feeling neither obedient nor a wife. Your eye catches her gaze as you do and something boils in your gut, bubbling up into the back of your throat. She looks away; she knows a coward when she sees one. She's had plenty of practice staring at you.

 

It comes time to assume the position, just the three of you again, in the most fucked up trinity you can imagine. Something in your legs feels like lead and you drag your feet, dawdling so slowly you can see the fury building in his icy eyes.

 

You've learned something about passive-aggressive defiance from the queen of it, and she's staring at you like you've grown three heads. It may seem like a tiny rebellion but it's new and she can see it clearly. Moreover, it's a pointed threat. A challenge to authority. A power play.

 

“Offred, sit up,” you say, and she dutifully perches on the edge of the bed. There's a twitch in her lips that Fred can't see from his angle.

 

“No, Offred. Lie back, please.” It's like he uses the word _please_ in that breathy way just to point out how rude you are, how unworthy you are of making demands. “Serena.” When he says your name, everything about the cadence changes. Months ago, that difference, the reverence towards her and the opposite towards you, would have made your blood boil and you'd lash out. It was all envy, and impotence. You see through his bullshit now, however, and you refuse to let him manipulate you like that again. For such a smart, capable woman, you sure were stupid.

 

She doesn't know which command to follow: the one she wants or the one she has to. People doing what they wanted regardless of laws and mores was precisely what got humanity into this child-sparse mess in the first place. You suspect it's also probably the only way out of it.

 

“Fred.” Your voice is low, like scolding a troublesome child and you know already what the response will be for your insolence. He'll bite his tongue for now, steel his gaze, and bide his time. His mastery of patience could be commended, frankly, and he knew better than anyone that vengeance was a dish best served cold.

 

Power struggles between you two are not new by any stretch, but in the past few years they've become much fewer in number. It helps that your power is officially unrecognized in Gilead, so he can ignore your suggestions and protests as he wants, by whatever whim he wishes. You can quash your own arguments with the word of law and God.

 

“Serena,” he answers, just as even as ever. “Take your place. Now. You too, Offred, please.”

 

All hail the master of the house.

 

He glares at you, and for a brief second your heart-rate raises as you wonder if you said that out loud, especially as sarcastically as it sounded in your head. There was a song once, from a musical you vaguely remember. It was basically the same thing.

 

You've always cringed at the metallic clink of a belt being unbuckled. There's something about the off-kilter music that reminds you of your father, the way you'd tremble as a child after doing something bad as his heavy footsteps grew closer. And your body has been conditioned to respond only one way. It doesn't matter that later in life it often preceded pleasure. There will always be just a twinge of discomfort at the sound. Now, as Fred removes his belt, you only have two options about what would come next: a lashing, or, rape. Never again would it signal even the most minute hint of pleasure.

 

Compliance is easy when you're afraid. They know that well. That is how they've built this world, after all. You crawl up onto your bed and her eyes seem to lose that flicker of pride as they catch yours. Like always, you look away. Ashamed. You don't take her wrists as they lie helpless at your sides. Again, you assure yourself that it's the tiny transgressions that mean more than bold displays of protest.

 

Nick's face swims in your vision momentarily, with his voice cutting through: _She doesn't have anyone to look out for her_.

 

The breeze hits you slightly before the stinging pain cut across your upper arm. There is no way to stifle the cry or the way your body lurches to avoid another. It's certainly not the worst whipping you've had and will probably only leave an angry red welt. This was merely the gentle type: a warning shot, a threat that it could be much, much worse.

 

Her hand is tight around your ankle, probably out of fear but maybe she's offering you support.

 

Fred steps back to the foot of the bed without a word and the message is clear but you resist all the same. Let him try it a second time. She offers her wrists like a prone Jesus, or a wilting flower. You place your hands gently on her shoulders instead. Miniature rebellions, you remind yourself. _One small step for man_.

 

Hazel eyes glance at your hands, then at your face just for a moment. His knuckles turn white around the leather belt in his fist and you've already braced yourself for the next hit. It comes quickly and disappears just the same. This time you don't cry as loudly and you don't flinch as dramatically.

 

“You are making this very difficult for yourself, sweetheart.” The sneer in that final word is unmistakable. He may as well have said, _Look what you're making me do_.

 

The fact you can see his erection still pressing against the front of his slacks makes your stomach turn, because it's not love—or even lust. It's not even duty. It's power and violence that is turning him on. Somehow you believed Fred, pathetic old Fred, wasn't like other men but if nothing else, God has decided to laugh in your face once again and show you what you married with blinding clarity.

 

Having been through this so often, June has resigned herself, her body limp as a rag and you're not sure if that's a sign it's your turn to grow a spine or if you should be mimicking her. After all, she's the one with survival instincts. She blinks slowly, once, as you stare down. You take her wrists in your hands as lightly as possible as Fred unzips his fly. _Grotesque_ is the only word that comes to mind.

 

The minute he enters June, your hands fall away from hers. You can no longer look at him; you can't look away at the blank walls or embroidered pillows on the chaise. You look down at her face with her eyes shut like she's asleep, on some other astral plane and you wish it could be really that easy. You've tried it, but no matter how many thoughts you forced through your head, you couldn't ignore the pain as it ripped through your body, the way he slammed into your cervix and how that hurt like nothing else, the shame it drowned you in. Hazy visions of Maui beaches did nothing to block out the way your teeth rattled against each other with every thrust.

 

She's made of such stronger stuff.

 

But there's a flicker, a squint and you know she's forcing herself to ignore as well so you reposition yourself on your knees. She's still in front of you, but you can bend over and you take her face gently in your hands, bring your face close to hers. Her blue eyes are wide open and questioning what the fuck you're doing now.

 

“Serena,” she says. Her voice is such a small whisper that if you hadn't seen her lips move, you would have thought it merely a rustle of fabric.

 

“Look at me,” you respond, loud enough that surely Fred can hear. His head turns to face you and you ignore the sure image of betrayal writ in every wrinkle, instead looking down to meet her questioning gaze. Acts make crimes, but motives make sins.

 

This is certainly not ideal. You could scream, you could stand up and walk away, you could take the antique vase on your dresser and smash it over his head. Maybe if you were a better person, you could. Any more resistance and you'll be whipped within an inch of your supposedly barren, useless life and she will still be raped. Nothing can prevent that. It passed the point where you could have done something years ago when you weren't even paying attention because it had nothing to do with you.

 

So, if you can't make it stop, at least you can lessen the pain. Even you know it's a pathetic attempt at atonement but that is your calling card, it seems: to make this world just mildly bearable after destroying it.

 

Your hovering blocks out any sight she has of your husband and his twisted grimace. Your lips linger close enough to her that you can insistently whisper all sorts of bullshit into her ear, anything that comes to mind, anything to drown out the sound of Fred's grunting. You tell her about the purple orchids blooming in the greenhouse. You describe how your painting of an oriole is coming along. You remind her of when you lost that second finger and she had murmured, _At least you don't have to knit anymore_ , and how you'd laughed genuinely for the first time in a really long time. Of course, it's obvious that none of this really removes her from reality at all, but it's a small gesture that you can provide.

 

You don't look at him again until it's over. Something flashes there and for the first time you realize that he hates you, like honestly, sincerely _hates_ you. When did that start or was it always there?

 

A growl would have been less foreboding. The way the words come out of his mouth, as if it's any other day and nothing is amiss causes a shudder to ripple through her body. It's so much worse. He wipes himself with a towel and zips up.

 

“Whatever _this_ is,”—he gestures dismissively to the two of you on the bed—“is going to stop.”

 

When he's left the room and you can hear his own bedroom door slam down the hall, a long, dreary sigh escapes your lips. She's moved away from you, sitting and wincing. There's very little to say. A slow, burning ache has your upper arm throbbing. It's going to need some ice, and will likely be dark purple tomorrow morning. Good thing it was your left arm, the one that's missing two fingers anyway. A lot of use it is to you.

 

“You should go back to your room.”

 

There had been many times you'd said those identical words to her and this is really no different. The fact is you don't really want her here right now because she's a living reminder of your failures and cowardice, even now. This is the system you were complicit in creating, staring you in the face full of rage and agony, begging you to just do one small thing to make it a little better. And you send her away. Again.

 

You want to lick your wounds in peace and pretend the last horrifying 5 minutes had never happened.

 

“Okay.” Resigned would be an understatement.

 

Her shoes clunk against the wooden floor, slowly, waiting for you to change your mind. You don't. You can't. Her shoulders have a sullen slump to them but there's nothing you can do for her now.

 

“Maybe it's best to stay there.” _Tonight_.

 

You suspect Fred will return later and as much as you've not really considered how immoral and illegal what you've been doing is, it is. If he catches you, you will swing on that wall for gender treachery, adultery, treason. The list could only get longer. You've officially made status as a fallen woman here, that same concept you brought to life in Gilead.

 

There's no telling what they would do to her. Sympathy for the Waterford household and all its inhabitants, regardless of fecundity, expired months ago.

 

“Serena,” she breathes. At first you expect some sort of argument or grating plea as is the norm with her. Instead she nods towards your arm and glancing down you catch the slow stain of dark red against blue. He did break skin it seems. But there's nothing more to say as she shakes her head and walks into the darkness of the corridor.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

If there was anything you could bet on, it would be that June would always do the exact opposite of whatever you asked of her. There is no knock at the door before it slides open just wide enough for the ghost to float in. You'd done nothing but lie awake in bed, waiting—dreading the moment Fred would come through the doorway. Anger simmers inside you at her presence because finally you're trying to protect her. Sure, part of that is self-preservation but you're certain most people don't do things purely out of some altruistic sense of ethics. But it is for her own good that you don't want her here when Fred slinks in, itching to dole out some punishment for his own lack of power.

 

“I told you not to come here,” you snarl quietly as she closes the door behind her silently.

 

“I know.” There is zero apology behind the words and it riles you even further. It's like she doesn't give a shit about everything you've done tonight.

 

By the time she makes it to the edge of your bed, you can feel the butterflies dancing in your stomach already. Your mouth is dry but it's no match for the heated throbbing in your arm. God, you hate her so much at times like this for your reaction to her nearness.

 

You shift away from her. “Then why are you here?”

 

A blasé shrug is the response you get for a long minute. “Your door has a lock.”

 

It strikes you finally that she's scared too. She puts on quite the front but the fact she's come to you again, as if you have any power whatsoever, is evidence enough that she's worried he'll make a visit to her haven. She'd risk whatever Hell comes her way being caught here rather than face Fred alone. There's a moment of hesitation before she lifts the blankets and invites herself under your sheets. You watch her carefully, fluffing the pillows and burrowing down to get more comfortable. The bed bounces a little as you crawl out and grab the key from the drawer in your bedside table. You've always been too anxious to actually use it on the off chance Fred would try the door, and get more enraged.

 

You'd never heard the way the lock clicks as you turn the key. It's fairly loud in the silence, but at least if he does pay you a visit, she'll have a few moments to hide.

 

She's on her side, blankets pulled up under her arms as she waits patiently for you to slide into this bed of horrors. Maybe it's some way to rewrite history, to overwrite what happened earlier. You're both wordsmiths after all. (Too bad it would be fiction.)

 

Apologies for the night get caught in your chest, clogging your lungs like swamp mud. Even if you could say them, it would sound hollow and _far_ too late to be meaningful. An apology should have come the moment you realized the terrors you'd unleashed and then did nothing about. It should have been directed towards all women, not just the mother of your child. (Yours and hers.) You should apologize for that as well because you know Nicole was never yours, not truly, and it literally kills you a little inside to be faced with that reality. But you loved her as if she wasn't stolen.

 

Everyone knows that much at least.

 

There's not much to say anymore so you lie on you side facing her, mere inches apart, so close you can feel her warmth puffs of breath against your cheek.

 

Maybe it's just co-dependence. Or idiocy. Maybe it's because you're both just broken down in the same ways. Maybe you have a brain parasite from all the untreated, organic meat you've had in the last few years. Maybe it's because nobody else in the world will ever understand precisely what has happened in this house, or experience exactly what you two have. Whatever the cause, you find yourself inexplicably calmed by the fact you can see her and feel her within touching distance.

 

You have officially become pathetic. The Serena Joy Waterford who wrote that book and incited those riots would spit in your face today.

 

What that Serena wouldn't understand is how just being with her, just like this, is a massive rebellion in itself. It's more dangerous to this fragile state than a short-lived Boston riot was to the monolith that had been America. When your hands travel along her bare skin, it's resistance. When she closes her eyes as she kisses you, that trust, is more threatening to the precariously balanced power structure than any man could know. Fred has an idea; they all have an idea. But they fail to recognize the actual potential. When you seek her comfort or she seeks yours, it's the spark Gilead had attempted to stamp out.

 

Old Serena would scoff, scold, and snarl at you to shut up, suck out this poison, and double down on your beliefs. She would tell you to go back to Gilead, head held high. But really, all you want to do is get out of here and find your daughter in Canada and never come back.

 

_Bitch. Criminal. Conspirator. Traitor. Apostate._

 

Americans had called you some of those things once before. You pray to God that there will be a chance for you to hear Gilead say them to you instead.

 

You want her with you as well. You know Nicole is not _yours_ , not really, not anymore, and especially not legally. No matter what, even if you never see June again, you've been tied together through this and there never will be a time in your life where you'll be able to think about Nicole without her. If you never see Nicole again, you won't escape the vision of June.

 

_Refugee. Escapee. Fugitive._

 

How feeble that sounds. An unnerved shudder slides its way up your back at the idea that you, Serena Joy Waterford, are as vulnerable and useless as those words imply, at the mercy of everybody else. Your meekness in Gilead was an act (you believed); you resent the possibility that it could be reality. You'd rather be a criminal, bitch or traitor because at least those meant action and choice.

 

Now, you're not an idiot.

 

You know that in another life none of this—this you and her thing, this baby thing—would have been a whiff of an idea. There's even maybe some Stockholm Syndrome interference on her part. But you also know how much you need her and you know that if this ever ends, if you ever get out of here alive, neither of you will be anything less than permanently damaged. You'll both be lucky to ever find someone to wake up next to again, someone that actually honestly understands the nights you wake up screaming in fear, the way certain sounds will make you freeze or vomit, the way you flinch from certain innocent touches, or the unreasonable way you reaction to a genuine comment.

 

That masters degree in psychology wasn't a complete waste as it turns out. (Of course, you'd used it for evil once. Or twice. Or many, many times.) You know exactly how fucked up you and she will be for the rest of your lives no matter whether you escape or not and whatever therapy is thrown your way on the other side.

 

And it's all your fault.

 

So, you lean forward and kiss her, not as tentatively as perhaps it might have been in the beginning but still holding back. She doesn't resist, never really has ever, but she also doesn't quite reciprocate. Not properly. Not the way you'd like.

 

“Goddammit, June.”

 

Your whispering whine is like a ghost escaping between the dizzying lack of space between your lips and hers.

 

You hate begging, and she knows that. It's the same game, over and over. Rules are always something you have a hard time with when they're not in your favour. Sure, on the surface you can act meek, play the role, but resentment always has bubbled away inside. But you wait now, anyway, again. Is there another choice?

 

Every single time she does this—and she is nothing if not bold about it—you like to think is a small, almost infinitesimal repayment for the torture she endured at your behest. It's nothing like the physical things she's experienced or even the mental, of course, but there's a suffering to it, a humiliation, a power she has over you like nothing else on earth.

 

If you could be forgiven, maybe it would be like this. Dragged out indefinitely over time. Passive-aggressively. Or, it could just be revenge. It's impossible to tell under these circumstances.

 

She barely has to move. You loathe the way your body eagerly responds to her mouth, but there's a thrill in feeling sin coursing through veins that had denied it for so long. Maybe if you were a different person, you'd realise it isn't really sin at all and this isn't about going to Hell. It's something far removed from that but you aren't a different person, not that much. As she kisses you back, it's as if parts of your insides are snapping, breaking, becoming unmoored. Your groping hands and ragged breathing makes it obvious how untethered you are, how completely out of fucking control.

 

You push it from your mind that mere hours ago, she was raped once again, in this same bed. And you helped.

 

This is a reclamation.

 

Of that. Of yourself. Of her own ability to choose.

 

Your lips are on her neck when she speaks. “I don't want to.”

 

You freeze in place, feeling the gentle pump of blood in her veins under your swollen lips, holding your breath. Part of you is frustrated, angry even at the words but the other, larger, part of you revels in how assured she sounds, like she isn't asking for a favour. Just stating her wishes. It's unwavering and unafraid. You've done this together. There are small rebellions and large revolutions. This is something in between.

 

You move back, your eyes flitting all over her face. “Okay.”

 

Of course there's still that flicker of relief when she sees you don't argue and you don't push your will onto her. There's a sadness the bites down on your chest for the first time possibly when you realise that she's so accustomed to the opposite.

 

The smile she gives you is rare. There isn't normally much cause to smile anymore, even in the hidden world you inhabit. This one isn't merely the sated grin after sex, or the cheeky slyness of a game. It's genuinely thankful. And it really shouldn't be as endangered as it is. “I didn't mean everything...” Her voice trails off momentarily. “Just, you know.”

 

Her palm is warm, and a little damp, on your cheek as she leans in again. It's so easy to forget that this is tantamount to a mortal sin in Gilead as you savour the taste of her.

 

Later, you fall asleep with her steady breathing a better sort of lullaby.

 

 

 


	3. some have made shipwreck of their faith; let them be blotted out of the book of the living

_“It was so hard to keep faith, but here you are. You're right here. You're my miracle. My beautiful miracle.”_

 

A long time ago—or what seems like it anyway—you recall standing in what would become Nicole's nursery, telling June that. Not the baby inside, you'd noticed later. _Her_. You'd held her hand in both of yours, stroked your thumb over her cheek, kissed her fingers more intimately than you'd touched your husband in some time. It was amazing what gentility hope could inspire in you. What terrifying truths that had been better repressed and lifeless, those that had lain dormant before that. How quickly you had unravelled without even realizing it at the mere chance of getting everything that you had so effectively convinced yourself would make you whole.

 

And you were right. Nicole did make you feel whole. She gave you a reason to wake up, a reason to control your temper, a light that you'd thought had extinguished itself. You love her and you couldn't care less whose womb she came from. Your beautiful baby girl.

 

(Yours and hers.)

 

(Her beautiful baby girl.)

 

Then you gave her up to a better life, something that was not yours to give. There was a moment where you thought June believed it too. For a while afterwards, you hadn't realised she was never yours to give; June had generously let you mimic being a mother, and play your part in the sick farce of your own creation.

 

The painful acceptance that your marriage was essentially dead felt nothing like losing Nicole, even though both of those had been the pillars holding up your entire being, along with the crumbling foundation of your faith and the collapse of your social status, of course.

 

You'd thought that was all you had left to lose.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The sun is bright and full by the time you wake up, a tight knot in your neck and tension roping across your shoulders. Next to you, the bed is cool and empty. Not a surprise, really. She always had been extra careful; it was you who got found in her bed once, by Rita. Nothing ever came of that, not even a raised eyebrow. Something approaching a tenuous alliance had sprung up almost overnight when Nicole went away. A woman's code, unspoken but agreed to.

 

There used to be a sort of regiment to your mornings, a very specific manner of things to follow before you could even present yourself downstairs for breakfast. Over the weeks, more and more often you found yourself caring less, wandering down in your nightdress and your favourite (only) huge woollen cardigan. Blue and white. The closest you can come to mixing colours. Sometimes you actually pull up your hair in a messy bun, but most days you can't even be bothered to do that.

 

This is one of the latter types of mornings.

 

Usually June is there, already sitting at the table eating whatever bland nutritional requirement is fit for her time in her cycle. Rita, of course, is busily bustling around everyday. She's the only one who keeps this mess in any sort of order whatsoever. Those fucking Guardians are always around too; only one today from what you can see.

 

Strange.

 

June is missing too.

 

There's no evidence she has come down yet which is particularly odd for her. Your palms rest lightly on the heavy wooden table in the kitchen.

 

“Has Offred been down yet?”

 

Startled by your voice, Rita jumps a little before facing you. “Yes, Mrs. Waterford.”

 

“Well, where is she?” you snap impatiently as if Rita is her minder as well as the glue of the household.

 

“I don't know, Ma'am.” She pours out some tea into your fine china teacup. “She left early.”

 

“Left?”

 

Rita nods, dodging around your glare. She's like an Olympic gymnast that way, easily slipping past any figurative knives thrown in her direction.

 

Slowly, as you sip the hot bitter liquid, something starts whirling in your mind. You see Fred's eyes. You hear that tone, so falsely jovial and detached. A familiar shiver passes down your spine and settles uncomfortably in the chasm inside you.

 

You're crashing through her door before you even realise it, and it bounces back so hard you nearly knock yourself back into the wall. The room is bare, as it always has been and the music box you gave her is still there on the dresser. You rip back the closet door and find it empty. No red dresses, no white bonnets, and no heavy brown boots far better suited for a farmer than a copy-editor. You snatch the music box and attempt to open it—of course it's locked.

 

There's always been that part of you that can't be tamed no matter how hard you try and it snarls from inside, thrashing for release. The blood in your body feels white-hot like liquid lightning. You smash the box down on the attic floor, a crack of old wood and the tinkle of out-of-tune music hits your ears all at once. The force is not enough to open the exceptionally crafted box, so you pick it up and try again, twice more, until the lid pops off with a crunch.

 

You would have no daughter to pass this down to anyway, you muse, staring at the splinters of painted wood and the ballerina broken from her pedestal.

 

There aren't any secret notes stashed inside. No trinkets. Nothing. And you swallow the disappointment and frustration, grimacing at the effort it takes to do so. You'd really thought she'd at least left you with something.

 

You feet are heavy as they pound down the old flight of stairs, two storeys of pure rage echo around the quiet morning house. It's no stranger to your tantrums and abuse, nor are its occupants.

 

“Fred!” The sound that erupts from your throat almost doesn't sound like you. It's rabid, feral, like a caged lion kept too long in the dark and you're not sure you can recognize yourself any longer. Something is slashing and tearing at your chest, desperate to escape. You scream his name until your voice cracks open. “Fred! _Fred_!!!”

 

He's in his study, his special little den where he can hide away and bathe in his own pitiful inadequacy. There is a void inside the two of you that has always been seeking fulfillment and you'd thought you could find it in each other. He drank from your success, intelligence, and influence. You drank from his affection... and surely something else. Now, you can't even remember the feeling. Inside of completing each other, it appears that you've sucked all the goodness out of each other, leaving him with only an addiction to power and you with only misplaced hunger.

 

Both of you are nothing but quiet, drifting fury masquerading as dogmatic fidelity.

 

“FRED!”

 

He barely even glances up, as if he's been expecting your tirade to reach him eventually. What good is the destruction wrought by a tornado if you can see it coming? Dismissively, he waves at his door, like you should close it behind you. Tiny rebellions, you remind yourself and ignore his request. The house can hear this; they should hear it.

 

“Where is she?” Your spine is dead straight and you likely look as if some storm has ravaged you.

 

“Who?”

 

Are there knives in here? A gun, perhaps? Anything sharp or heavy that you can take to his head? _Red_ is the only thing in your mind. “Who? Don't you fucking dare, Fred!”

 

“Take a breath—.”

 

“I will not calm down for you!” You step forwards into his sanctuary. So many of his sins are here, laid out in front of you. Those long nights playing Scrabble with Handmaids, grooming them, seducing them, buying them illegal gifts. Giving them conversation, affection, attention. They got all the things you never do. Not anymore. They got all the things you once took for granted, never believing that Gilead would mean that love—real love—existed only in the past tense. There's something worse than mere jealousy of his misplaced affections that gnaws slowly at you every time you walk by this office. It should be _your_ office. You both know it. No, you didn't give that away. That wasn't the plan all those years ago. He stole that from you too.

 

Your office. Your work. Your ideas. Your freedom. Your faith. Your voice.

 

_Her_.

 

“Where. Is. She?!” Each word is punctuated like a bullet. If only words could kill; he'd be long dead. “Where did you send her, you petulant fucking child?”

 

Finally, he stands, slowly placing his ornate pen down and moving towards you, past you. “Darling, you really need to stop. Close the door. I guarantee it's in your best interest.”

 

He smells of expensive cologne and weakness as he brushes your shoulder, leaving a sickly sort of breeze in his wake. It used to comfort you after a long day at work, to come home and just get a whiff of him as you entered the condo. You can still remember nuzzling into the crook of his neck, with his arms tightly wound around you, listening to Mazzy Star or maybe some illicit Velvet Underground.

 

Now, your voice hisses at him instead. “Tell me what you've done.”

 

Nick's voice echoes hollowly in your memory again like a recurring nightmare: _She doesn't have anyone to look out for her_.

 

When Fred just looks at you as if you're the insane one, the hairs on the back of your neck raise.

 

“Her time was up here. You're the one who wanted her gone.” He smirks and you swallow the bile building in the your throat. “Remember?”

 

(How many times did you throw a fit over her being in the house?)

 

For a moment, you can do nothing but stare at him until you find your voice, wavering and quieter. “This is different...”

 

There's a momentary flash of understanding on his face and you forget that he's the enemy right now. His hazel eyes seem lost, searching perhaps. “It is. She's on her way to a new district, just as you requested. A change of scenery will be good for her. Don't you think?” His voice is so even and calm, as if talking to a particularly stupid child. It feels like there's threat in there too. “We can't have Handmaids getting too attached. Or anybody else.”

 

It's quite the comment coming from him.

 

“Is this because...” Your voice trails off as you finally start to see the real reasons behind all this. You can feel the edges of your lips rise in a sneer, despite your best efforts. “How does it feel to be so in love with her and have her hate you in return?”

 

He shrugs, as if he hadn't spent hours and weeks seducing her in his own gross way, raping her in seedy hotels surrounded by vice and prostitutes. As if he wasn't hurt just a little that she didn't beg to stay. “I don't know, Serena. How _does_ it feel?”

 

Leaning back in that leather armchair that only men of high status were allowed to sit in, there's an arrogant smirk stretched across his lips. Venomous, almost. And he knows he's got you. Your mouth opens soundlessly, desperate to argue but you close it again when no words seem to materialise.

 

“You really think I can't see it? You think I can't tell when my own wife is going behind my back?”

 

Your once-brilliant mind is coming up blank, and he sighs, as if he's actually concerned. It's not clear whether it's about you, or himself.

 

“You may be sinful and adulterous but I don't want you hanging from the Wall with a pink triangle on your hood.”

 

Of course not.

 

How would it look for a Commander's wife to be so unfulfilled that she seeks the company of other women? First the Handmaid runs away, then his wife publicly humiliates him by reading, then he literally loses a baby, then his wife gets it off with the Handmaid? That blows Warren Putnam's fellatio debacle out of the water by a mile. If it wasn't for you actually needing to be dead for this scenario, you think you'd rather enjoy watching the fallout.

 

He looks down at the papers on his desk and you recognise a Handmaid requisition form on the top of the pile.

 

The last thing you can deal with now is a new Handmaid. If you had your way, you wouldn't have another ever again. A baby? Well, yes, you still want a baby, of course but you've finally come to some vague understanding of June's obsession with her eldest daughter. Nicole is out there, somewhere, unreachable, and you have no idea what she's doing, how she is. Nothing. The not knowing chips away at you a little every single day; it's like the light slips away inch by inch.

 

( _That's not your child,_ you hear that voice taunting you once again.)

 

You don't bother correcting him that you'd be much more likely to be sent to the colonies, complete with a little “Redemption”, if they're feeling particularly cruel.

 

“It's not like—”

 

“Don't be so _stupid_ , Serena.”

 

Your shoulders tense at the word and you clench your teeth, grinding down on a plethora of insults you could throw back in his face. If there's anything you hate being labelled, it's that, and he knows it. There's little else to say now that you've both stopped throwing recited bible verses around like confetti. There's no God in this house and you find no point in pretending otherwise any longer. No doubt you will find Him again, just not here. Maybe not even for a long time, until you've been granted the ability to see His grace again.

 

Atonement begets forgiveness.

 

Instead, you take slow steps towards his big mahogany desk and tent your fingers, leaning over and allowing your natural, large stature to intimidate him. He had always acted as if it never bothered him when you'd be just one or two inches taller. A law was passed about the maximum height of the heels on Wives' shoes. You are pretty sure you know exactly who came up with that one.

 

“How dare you place this household in such a danger—”

 

Something snaps again. “ _Me_?” Your scoff seems almost as loud as your screams earlier. “Oh, you're incredible.”

 

The double standards in this republic are bearing down too hard on your sanity. Marching purposefully over to the table, you pluck the Scrabble box from its resting place. Last time, you flung the pieces all over. This time, you shake it ruefully, and without a second glance to your husband, throw the whole damn thing into the fireplace.

 

It doesn't provoke the reaction you had hoped. Instead, Fred stares quietly at you, as if watching a struggling sick dog on its last legs. Pity. You loathe the look people get on their faces, the way they force out _that_ smile, and the whispers that float out through the cracks when they think you can't hear them any more.

 

Finally, he sighs as your tantrum runs its course. “You done?”

 

“Fred, please. Tell me where she is.”

 

Whatever slight softness was on his face seems to turn to stone almost instantaneously. “Who? The Handmaid you fucked or our daughter you willingly handed over to terrorists?”

 

You swallow, hard. _You fucked her too; you raped her_ , you want to argue, but bite down on your tongue until the taste of iron floods your mouth. _You've tasted her sin and mine._

 

“Which one, Serena?!” His voice raises for the first time this morning, and he's positively livid. There's a sharpness, a ruthlessness to the sound, like the sheer strength it's taking to withhold his true fury is breaking him in half. His fist slams down loudly against the desk and you flinch automatically. “WHICH ONE?!”

 

The scars across your back feel as if they're tightening, confining you like shackles. Guilt rakes through your chest when you realise you hadn't been thinking about your daughter at all and he knows this clearly. As the silence drags on, you can feel his furore dissipating.

 

There's only one way to resist: “June.”

 

It's his turn to flinch, but at your words, not your temper. Saying her name is both blasphemous and insolent, a contemptuous way to defy him. “Offred's whereabouts are not your concern any longer.”

 

He seems to consider something else, and flips over a page of writing you're not allowed to read but you'd recognise the words of Proverbs anywhere. “So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God; for her house sinks down to death.” Glancing up at you, that cutting look in his eyes again, he continues further. “There will be a new Offred.”

 

“No.” Your entire body thrums with nerves; there might be a bit of vomit building back in your throat.

 

“No? Well, I'm not sure that's your call to make, _darling_.”

 

You know there's no arguing with him because this is exactly the society you've brought to life, and he's taken to his role like a pig in shit and you force your breathing to slow. There would be nothing worse now than letting him see what a mess he's made of you by taking her away, by dismissing every single word you utter. Rolling your shoulders and feeling the small bones of your neck crack gives a sense of relief but it's a trick because as soon as you look at him again, your body shudders with both contained rage and something like fear. It's new. You hate it, and you hate your own disloyal body for every acute reaction he provokes.

 

Unaware, he shuffles papers, dismissively. You'd seen that gesture before, long ago, when you were still allowed to hold a pen. The lead at the first publishing house you'd shopped your book to—a woman with cheaply dyed blonde hair and a terrible fashion sense—had done it to you after looking over the first few chapters of _A Woman's Place_. An unbidden vision of June, in her previous life, swims ahead of you. That woman had the same subtle sneer, the same glazed look in her eyes, and the same disinterest that Fred has now. Your hands clench around the blue fabric of your blue cardigan at the same time your teeth grind together.

 

But the way his hands tremble just that tiny bit shows he's more rattled than he lets on. You know him well enough to sense every weak spot. You know this has challenged his fragile manhood on a level beyond the previous limits of his imagination. His virtuous wife took his place, with another woman. He must be so jealous, and you feel sense of perverse pride about that.

 

Finally, he lets out a long, hollow breath and folds his hands across the paperwork in front of him. His eyes bore into yours, persistently. Something flickers there, something not altogether dangerous but rather like a hurt animal. It's far beneath him to ask you to explain anything anymore but still, there are parts of you—and all women—that he'll never be privy to without their explanation.

 

“Fred,” you pause, not knowing how to begin that explanation. “Fred, I—” you cut yourself off again, hating how idiotic you sound. You were never the stupid girl, but you were also never caught doing such stupid things either.

His voice creaks, sounding so incredibly spent, exasperated by this whole situation when he asks, “Why?”

You slowly sit down in a chair, thinking it over because it's a question you'd always asked of yourself, often times with disgust and guilt soaking through your skin. Pulling your cardigan around yourself like a protective shield, you fiddle with the hem. Something about focusing on June calms your ragged nerves.

 

 

Fred was away once, not for long. Just an overnight trip to what used to be Manhattan and there was a sense of freedom then, even if those guardians were still stalking the house. With a closed door, you felt protection. She was there, in your bed in the soft falling evening light. You passed a cigarette back and forth between you. Another vice you thought you'd quit. In the other hand, you had glasses of his most expensive scotch on the rocks just as a tiny, extra “ _Fuck you_.” Her cheeks were pink from the alcohol, her slip loose and falling off one shoulder after you had pulled it aside to run your lips across her clavicle. You can still remember the throaty giggle and how she spilled her drink over the rim of the crystal glass.

 

She has dimples when she smiles, you learned that night.

 

You'd both spoken freely all evening, relaying memories and thoughts, and you tried to get her to see part of what tethered you to the ideal of Gilead. She didn't have to try very hard for you to see her side. In your mind, you can still see the cutting glare when you ask if she would have been this recalcitrant had she been an Econowife and allowed to stay with her husband and child. Maybe you hit a nerve, maybe she just thought you were a bitch.

 

The cigarette ash had fallen onto the silk duvet in that drawn out silence. Then she snorted, gave you a sad shake of her head and took a long drag of your smuggled Virginia SuperSlims. You'd become accustomed to disappointing her.

 

_You're unbelievable, Serena_.

 

But she didn't leave your bed; she just lay back against the headboard and smirked at you, irritated of course but grudgingly used to your idiocy. And refused to answer.

 

_Just unbelievable._

 

 

She never fails to bite back. There's something very sexy about an audacious, persistent woman.

 

Your mind whirls with all the reasons you find yourself drawn to her. Fred's staring at you in that way where it looks like he's going to absorb whatever you say and take it for himself.

 

“I have needs too.”

 

You don't mention that it goes well beyond the physical intimacy that was non-existent in your marriage. You have a need to converse and discuss ideas, to share, to laugh, to forget this lonely, shitty fucking world you've made, to have a friend.

 

That last one, it was the most desperate need of all: to connect with somebody.

 

“My wife... How _licentious_ you've become.” He scoffs and shakes his head, like he's just tasted something sour. As if he's not a hundred times worse. “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.”

 

The disgust is clear across his face, and it makes you feel like a depraved, immoral deviant, like you should be ashamed for even wanting the most basic of human interaction. Something flares inside of you in response. Blood rushes through your eardrums, deafening until you have to raise your voice above the din. “I'm a fucking human being, Fred!”

 

He actually has the audacity to laugh at you, or just at the idea that you are anything more than a perverted, violent monster. “I have some Handmaids, Marthas, and a certain Guardian that would testify to the opposite.”

 

Threats are not uncommon from him any longer and he holds them over you like currency. You lean towards him, and your voice drops to a low growl. “Look in a goddamn mirror.”

 

There was a time when that smooth arch of his eyebrow was something of a turn on; it was full of promise and trouble. Now it only reflects disdain. His silence leaves nothing to the imagination. He's not worried, or scared, or anything other than mildly amused at your empty retort. There's a pen just sitting there, near your elbow and you could just grab it, lunge forwards, dig it into his neck like in those spy movies you used to watch together. Your eyes linger on it probably a little too long.

 

But she knows it, he knows it, and you know it: you've always been a coward at heart.

 

Defeated, you sigh. “What do you want from me? You want me to lean over the back of the chair again? Bring me in front of a judge and air out my wretchedness for the whole council to hear? Then what, you want me to swing from the Wall? Will that finally make you feel like a big man, Fred?”

 

Slowly, he reaches across and for a moment you think he's trying to take your hand, as a husband comforting his wife would. But he merely plucks the red pen from your shadow and places it beside him with every move calculated precisely. Eventually he looks you straight in the eye and there's nothing there, just muted apathy.

 

“Honestly, Serena,” he heaves a great breath, as if talking to you is somehow exhausting. Some kind of burden. “If it was up to me, I'd say you're a waste of perfectly good rope.”

 

His voice is soulless and hollow in a way you'd never recognised before. _But woe to you, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short_.

 

A part of you hates yourself for not seeing it sooner. Of _course_ he doesn't want you on that wall, in public, that was clear from the start. It'd be much more prudent to have it done quietly, without an audience to your crimes. Something like an accident... but not. It's like the things you'd read about in the newspaper or watched on those terrible true crime TV programmes that always came on late at night, back when there was television.

 

The ominous music would swell.  _She never saw it coming_ , some bellow-voiced narrator would say. 

 

Neighbours would claim that he was such a nice, normal guy, a real pillar of the community; his family would be livid at the insinuation he could ever do such a vile thing. A retired detective would say that it's always the husband, after all. And the jury would find him not guilty based on some lack of a piece of integral evidence.

 

In Gilead, a jury is a heretical concept; _justice goes forth perverted_.

 

So it's back to that tiny fishbowl again, the two of you, charging and circling, biting deeper and harder each time. One on one.

 

Fred is watching you, waiting for you to falter and pounce on him, to react, to give him an excuse. Your jaw clenches and you swallow that hard lump in your throat. It's painful to keep the words you long to scream inside; it's not normal for you. They leak out in small gestures and explode out in fits of violence, and you can't risk either of those things with him, not now. Not when he's waiting for you to stumble, just enough to take advantage of any vulnerability.

 

A grimace tightens your lips into something weakly masquerading as deference.

 

“You're right.”

 

When you don't take the bait, his arrogant sneer wobbles just enough to let you see the tiny, furious man inside. She got out of here. Your daughter got out. He's still here. So are you.

 

All you see is your betta fish, circling.

 


End file.
